New-to-me games played recently include …

SEERS CATALOG (2024): Rank 4270, Rating 6.9

Hand shedder where each player is dealt some secret powers to help shed. Which aren’t enough to help a bad hand and they slow things down a bit while people process but hey, the game was fine, playable, just not elevated.

Rating: 6

DRACULA VS VAN HELSING (2023): Rank 1291, Rating 7.4

Each player has a secret hand, where the card in each position corresponds to the matching region on the board (from left to right). Draw, improve your hand (hopefully), and discard a card for its special effect (eg force your opponent to reveal a card). When you think you’re winning the regions you want to win, call for the end of round, show hands, and the best card for each region wins it. Each player has different winning conditions so it’s a matter of shooting for the regions you need while stopping your opponent getting theirs over 5 rounds. It was fast, luck-bound, thinky, fun, and engaging all at once in a nice timeframe.

Rating: 7

IN FRONT OF THE ELEVATORS (2019): Rank 2842, Rating 7.0

There are 3 queues of cards aka people and your goal is to have cards in your colour in the front scoring positions once the deck runs out. There are rules to insert people into the queues (girls before boys before woman before … etc). Hope that people can’t insert their cards into queues and push your cards back. Hope you can insert your cards at the front (especially as the end approaches). Which is totally dependent on what other people do. I found it a boring luck-fest, made worse by having to play 3 rounds of the same.

Rating: 5

FAUST VS MEPHISTO (2025): Rank 11573, Rating 7.4

Odd 2p trick-taker with a small deck where one player has a set of goals and the other just had to stop them. Which in my one game seemed either too easy or too dependent on hand draw. Either way, it didn’t fill us with any burning desire to find out.

Rating: 5

LONE WOLVES (2024): Rank 3131, Rating 7.6

A surprisingly neat 2p, playing cards to your side of the fields in the middle to win them. While you have to follow suit, you don’t have to play to the same field. The winning card adds its strength to its field (because highest strength in the end will win its VPs), the losing card gets to take a special effect in its field (which are sometimes even more useful). Trump will eventually change, plan for it. It felt like the right amount of thinky, avoided most of the 2p trick-taking issues, and completed in a nice time. Enjoyable.

Rating: 7

RAISING CHICAGO (2025): Rank 9295, Rating 7.4

I liked the link between placing a bid on a spot to earn its resource and how the most bids in an area wins its building. Which you’ll have gathered the right resources to be able to build if there’s a semblance of competence. But the longish bidding process gets repetitive over 5 rounds. The game gets complicated by the mechanism to move buildings which requires downtime to understand all the icons and options and then optimise. Thematically interesting, sure, but a little bland in the end.

Rating: 6

SANDBAG (2010): Rank 11032, Rating 6.2 – Alspach

Avoidance trick-taker where you have cards in front of you which can be used by other players (to avoid taking a trick). Whichever suit has the most cards showing is trumps, so that can be manipulated mid-hand as well. The ‘piece de resistance’ for this luck-fest was putting in can’t-win cards worth a motza which, when played, either king-make or make-up. Which makes for a ‘whats-the-point’ game.

Rating: 5

SPELLWARDS (2021): Rank N/a, Rating N/a

Be the first to play all the cards from your hand. In real-time, as fast as you can, get rid of a card by saying a word that starts with the letter on top of the play pile and ends with the letter (and is of the length specified) on the card you’re playing. Good vocabulary and a quick mind helps. Everyone else is toast – it’s not fun for them and it’s marginal for the one who’s born for it.

Rating: 4

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

RJ Garrison – I enjoyed my couple plays of Faust v. Mephisto.  I enjoy the decision making, but need to get it back to the table a few more times before I decide if it’s going to stay in the collection.

Fraser: Seers Catalog did not click with us.  Then again neither did 7 Wonders Duel (not implying that they are similar of course, other than they did not click with us).